Groups Want To Tell Story Of Battle Site

Blue, Gray Fought Over Long-forgotten Canal

February 05, 1999|By Cathy Jett The Free Lance-Star

FREDERICKSBURG — Enos Richardson sees Kenmore Avenue and envisions the pandemonium that took place there during the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Union soldiers who had advanced in orderly columns through town on Dec. 13, 1862, didn't find today's quiet, tree-lined street, said Richardson, who is president of the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust. Instead, they were confronted with the single most important bottleneck of the battlefield: a nearly 10-foot-wide millrace, or canal, filled with water.

"The bridges across this were torn up, and the canal itself was held by the rebel sharpshooters," Union soldier Franklin Sawyer of the 8th Ohio Skirmishers wrote afterward. "It was our perilous duty to drive these forces back into their main works."

Today, the only sign of that bloody, muddy crossing is a two-sentence National Park Service marker in front of the Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors office.

"About 90 percent of the people who come to Fredericksburg don't even know it's there," Richardson said of the historic site. His organization and two other preservation-minded groups are working with the City Council and Fredericksburg's School Board to change that, possibly by the end of this year.

The Battlefields Trust - along with the Rappahannock Valley Civil War Round Table and the Historic Fredericksburg Found-ation - asked city officials to put up three or four illustrated displays explaining what happened at the canal. The site would add depth to the well-known story of the fierce fighting at the stone wall along Sunken Road.

The City Council and the School Board approved the request during a joint meeting recently. The city owns Maury Field, but school officials have to approve any activities that take place there. The signs would be the centerpiece of a shady mini-park carved out of the corner of Maury Field bordered by Kenmore Avenue and Hanover Street.

The next step will be for the historic preservation groups to raise the nearly $20,000 the project would cost.

The work would include reconfiguring the chain-link fence around Maury Field, paving the area and adding benches.

"It'll also be a nice amenity on the walking tour of town," said Karen Hedelt, Fredericksburg's tourism development manager. "People will be hiking up that hill in July and August. A little rest under the trees will be welcome."